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11/11/2005

Trouble in Virginia AG Election?

Stephen Moore writes at OpinionJournal's Political Diary that:

Tuesday's elections aren't over in Virginia -- not by a long shot. On Tuesday night Republican candidate for attorney general Bob McDonnell appeared to have won the race against Democrat Creigh Deeds by 1,600 votes out of 1.9 million cast. But Mr. Deeds isn't conceding and Republicans in the state fear that Virginia may be headed for a long, drawn-out process reminiscent of Palm Beach, Florida in 2000 or last November's multiple recount fiasco in Washington State.

Adding to the GOP jitters is that Mr. McDonnell's margin of victory keeps shrinking by the hour, with the latest tally showing Mr. McDonnell now up by less than 1,100 votes. With each new report, the Democrat Mr. Deeds continues to pick up votes in one of the largest and most Democratic counties in the state, Fairfax, outside of Washington, D.C. Mr. Deeds won Fairfax by nearly 15 percentage points and the president of the Board of Elections in Fairfax happens to be Larry Byrne, the husband of Leslie Byrne, the liberal Democrat who ran unsuccessfully as Lt. Governor candidate for the Democrats. Not only has Mr. Byrnes refused to recuse himself from the recount process, but he has also shut out Republicans from overseeing the process. A top aide to Mr. McDonnell tells us: "An ostensibly public process of handling the ballots has become non-public. Our people can't oversee what the board is doing."

Another reason for Republicans to be nervous is that Mr. Deeds not only refuses to concede defeat but has even named a transition team, which could be the first time in Virginia history that a losing candidate has appointed people to make plans for assuming office anyway. Mr. Deeds is now alleging a voting machine malfunction in the Roanoke area. "When every vote is counted, I will be the next Attorney General in Virginia," he says. Mr. McDonnell's forces are worried that every vote will be counted and recounted -- and then some -- until Democrats reach the desired result.

Karl Rove at the Federalist Society

Karl Rove gave a talk tonight at the Federalist Society annual dinner. My reaction was somewhat different than this report by Reuters. The first thing that struck me was Roves claim at the beginning of his talk that the Bush administration had ended judicial activism. To say the least, I was a little surprised at this claim and thought that I had misheard it, but it was clear that this activism had already ended. Many cases immediately came to mind such as Kelo or the juvenile death penalty cases from this past year. Rove also gave a ringing defense of Harriet Miers and to my surprise also there were a number of people (though a clear minority) who stood up and applauded her.

Who are the bad guys in Iraq?

Dan Gifford's son, who just had a tour of duty in Iraq, had a lot of interesting things to say about his time there. Here is one of the facts that he mentioned:

"Most of the carnage is caused by the Zarqawi Al Qaeda group. They operate mostly in Anbar province (Fallujah and Ramadi). These are mostly "foreigners", non-Iraqi Sunni Arab Jihadists from all over the Muslim world (and Europe). Most enter Iraq through Syria (with, of course, the knowledge and complicity of the Syrian govt.) , and then travel down the "rat line" which is the trail of towns along the Euphrates River that we've been hitting hard for the last few months. Some are virtually untrained young Jihadists that often end up as suicide bombers or in "sacrifice squads". Most, however, are hard core terrorists from all the usual suspects (Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas etc.) These are the guys running around murdering civilians en masse and cutting heads off. The Chechens (many of whom are Caucasian), are supposedly the most ruthless and the best fighters. (they have been fighting the Russians for years). In the Baghdad area and south, most of the insurgents are Iranian inspired (and led) Iraqi Shiites. The Iranian Shiia have been very adept at infiltrating the Iraqi local govt.'s, the police forces and the Army. The have had a massive spy and agitator network there since the Iran-Iraq war in the early 80's. Most of the Saddam loyalists were killed, captured or gave up long ago."

Follow up: The CDC reports that for 2002 there were 26 accidental gun deaths for children under 10 and 60 for children under 15 in the US. My own work using the CDC numbers indicates that the vast majority of the children who died from accidental shots from 1995 to 2001 where killed by adult male criminals, who gun locks would not stop from firing their own guns.

One wonders if these politicians know the damage that they do for future disasters because the very threat of these regulations and interventions reduce the expected profit companies will earn from fixing problems as they arise. The possibility of higher prices when disasters strike also gives oil companies an incentive to put aside more gas to cover those emergencies. Storing gas is costly, and if you want them to bear those costs, you had better compensate them. The irony is that letting the companies charge higher prices actually reduces customers total costs when you include such things as having to wait in long lines because there will be more gas available when the disaster strikes. The mere threat of price controls eliminates the possible profits oil companies can make in solving this problem and thus eliminates their incentive to store gasoline.

I will look forward to reading his research when he sends it to me. I couldn't find it on SSRN. Possibly he has some strong critiques of Choi and Gulati, but despite the long discussion presented he never explicitly mentions what his objection is to Choi and Gulati's quality measures based upon citations and invocations (the later is when the name of a judge is mentioned in citing his opinion). I will reserve judgment until I have it to read, which hopefully will be very soon.

Wisconsin holds hearings on Right-to-carry law

Only four states ban people being able to carry concealed weapons. One vote made the difference last time where a previous sponsor changed his position under pressure from the governor, and a similarly close vote will likely take place this time.